The Pros And Cons Of UN Peacekeeping

UN peacekeeping was created after WWII to maintain peace in the World. Despite the successful UN peacekeeping operations, such as the ones that were in Cambodia, Haiti, and Liberia, there have been much more unsuccessful operations. During the cold war, the UN peacekeeping was pretty much useless against the two superpowers. Despite the end of the cold war, the UN still had many failures in the 1990s. For instance, the ongoing violence and conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is still unresolved until today. Other failures include the Rwandan Genocide, the Bosnia massacre, and the tragedy in Somalia. The UN peacekeeping operations cannot achieve justice.

In the past and even today, the UN suffers from their incapability to satisfy the precipitous demand for peacekeeping operations. The fact that they do not have their own army and the low supply of troops make the situation even harder to resolve. Many people go to the UN peacekeeping bases for protection and security, which significantly crowds the UN bases, and reduces the

For instance, UN peacekeepers need the consent of all parties in order to intervene, which requires a lot of time (Mouat), and in most situations, there is no time and immediate intervention is required. The overwhelming duties of UN peacekeepers and their restrictive orders make it really difficult for UN peacekeepers to establish peace in time, and, thus, there are often a lot of casualties. On top of that, the purpose of peacekeeping, which is to keep peace, often cannot attain justice. In most of the UN peacekeeping operations there is no peace to keep, and the making of peace is required. For instance, in the Rwandan genocide, the country was extremely chaotic and there was already no peace, and since the UN peacekeepers’ orders were just to keep the peace and not restore it; about 800 000 people in Rwanda